US Sanctions, Baffled Russians, Hot Air and History
The Saker • February 2, 2018 •So, finally, the suspense is over. Kind of. The US Treasury has finally released the list of Russian entities and individuals which could (conditionally!) be sanctioned by the US Treasury in compliance with the H.R.3364 – Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. These two short excerpt from the report show why I say “could”:
and
Now
let’s translate all this in plain English: the US took a copy of the
Kremlin telephone book, then a copy of Forbes and created a new list
combining both. Then the US proclaimed that these entities and
individuals are not under any sanctions yet, but are candidates for such
sanctions.
Does that make *any* sense to you *at all*?!
Well,
if it does, stop reading and enjoy your unique gifts. If it does not,
then don’t feel bad as this makes no sense whatsoever for anybody in
Russia either. Oh how I wish modern technologies would make it possible
for me to post here all the recent interviews, articles, talk-shows and
public statements made in Russia for the past 24 hours! To say that the
Russians are baffled is, really, an understatement.
Two
things are noteworthy: first, this list completely ignores one of the
most important realities of Russian politics: that the real, dangerous,
opposition to Putin is not from the people (who support him at anywhere
between 60% to 80%+) or from the Russian media (which, while often
critical, does not represent a real threat to him) or even the Duma
(whose opposition parties are critical of the Kremlin, but who are very
careful about criticizing Putin himself lest they lose support from the
people) . For years now I have been explaining that the real opposition
to Putin is a) inside the ruling elites, including the Presidential
Administration and the Government and b) big money: banks, oligarchs,
etc. I call this (informal) opposition the “Atlantic Integrationists”
because what these pro-western globalists want is for the AngloZionist
Empire to accept Russia as an equal partner and to have Russia fully
integrate itself into the US-controlled international financial and
security structures: WTO, NATO, EU, G7/8, etc. Very roughly speaking you
could call them as the “Medvedev people” (but you could also say that
the Ministers in charge of the Russian economy all fall into this
category, as do almost all the heads of Russian banks). I call the
(informal) group supporting Putin the “Eurasian Sovereignists“.
These are the folks who see the future of Russia in the South, East and
even North, who want to pull Russia out of the AngloZionist
international financial and security structures and who want a truly
sovereign Russia to contribute to a new truly multi-polar world in
collaboration with countries like China or the other BRICS countries.
Very roughly you could call these people the “Putin people” (but you
could also say that figures such as Ivanov, Rogozin, Shoigu and a few
others are key personalities).
This
is important because the this list of (potentially sanctioned) people
makes absolutely no distinctions between these two groups. Check out
this article on RT entitled “Major Russian bank will no longer service defense industry over US sanctions fears“.
It quotes the Alfa Bank CEO Mikhail Fridman whose net worth is
estimated at $16.2 billion by Forbes,saying that in magazine that
Alfa-Bank was cutting ties with the Russia’s defense industry, adding, “What can we do?”. Now look at the list, Appendix II, entry #23. Do you see who is there? Yup, the very same Mikhail Fridman!
Now
let me add this: in the current political climate in Russia, to have
bank accounts in the West is considered shameful and unpatriotic and
that is something which even most dishonest and hypocritical Eurasian
Sovereignists can hardly afford for political reasons (that does not
mean that some don’t try, they do, but at a great political risk). In
contrast, among Atlantic Integrationists, whose power and influence does
not depend on public opinion, having assets abroad is much less
dangerous and, therefore, much more common.
Now
that the the US Treasury has released this “list of marked individuals”
(and their families, relatives or associated corporate entities) for
potential, unspecified, future sanction, who do you think will freak out
most, the Eurasian Sovereignists or the Atlantic Integrationists? Then
look a step further and forget about the US for a second: Russia is
trying hard to work with the Europeans on many join projects. What do
you think the creation of such a list will have on joint ventures
between EU and Russian businessmen? I predict two things:
- It will place a great deal of pressure on EU corporations not to do business with the Russians and, therefore, it will further place the EU and the US on a collision course.
- It will hurt the Atlantic Integrationists where it hurts them the most: in their financial interests.
Frankly,
if I were paid to think long and hard about how to come up with the
dumbest and most self-defeating foreign policy decision for the US I
could never do better than what the Trump Administration and Congress
have just done. This is, by the way, something which all Russian
analysts agree with. What they don’t agree with are the reasons for that
seemingly completely and terminally stupid move. Here are the various
schools of thought in Russia on that account:
Group One: “the slap in the face of Russia”:
They
believe that the sole intention was to insult and humiliate Russia by
basically declaring that all the top Russian people are gangsters.
According to them, there ain’t much the US can do to Russia other than
to continue a petty war of insults and harassment (like the expulsion of
Russian diplomats and the seizure of Russian consular buildings in the
US).
Group Two: “it’s all internal US politics”:
That
groups says that this has nothing to do with Russia at all. According
to them, the US economy is doing well under Trump, the Democrats have
nothing to use against him so all they do is continue to hammer the
“Russian threat” fairytale to which Trump responds with deliberately
ineffective and totally symbolic actions which make it look like he is
anti-Russian when in reality he is quietly sabotaging the Democrats’
attempts at truly worsening relations with Russia and preventing the
Democrats from playing the “Russian threat” card against Trump.
Group Three: “Трамп Наш” (Тrump is ours):
No,
nobody in Russian seriously thinks Trump is a Russian agent or is
somehow “owned” by Russia—they say that as a joke, always laughing. But
what they do mean is that deep down Trump is a friend of Russia and is
actually helping Russia and Putin. How? By taking all sorts of measures
which only hurt the US while very powerfully helping Russia (for
example, by forcing Russian oligarchs to bring their foreign assets back
to Russia). Some even go as far as saying that this list is most
damaging to the people opposed to Putin and that it gives him a pretext
to fire them all after the Presidential elections in Russia. Far from
considering Trump a bumbling idiot, this group sees him as a consummate
politician who is actually creating the circumstances to really hurt his
(real) enemies and help his (real) friends.
Group Four: “Наших бьют!” (Our people are under attack!):
This
is the group which doesn’t care at all why the US is doing this or
that, no matter how clumsy. All they care about is that this is yet
another attack on “our people” (meaning Russian individuals or corporate
entities) and that means that Russians should “circle the wagons” and
come to the rescue of those thus attacked. This group most vociferously
demands retaliatory steps from the Kremlin. They are a vocal minority.
Group Five: “Филькина Грамота” (Botched document produced by clueless idiots [very approximate translation!])
This
is the group which basically says that it is all much more simple and
no complex explanations are needed: the Trump Administration and
Congress is composed of clueless idiots who have no idea what the hell
they are doing and who like to produce some policy decisions just to
look like they still matter in the world when they really don’t. Putin
himself seems to be in this last group as he officially called this
latest US document “complete stupidity“.
Frankly,
in my experience the decision making process in the US is almost never
the result of the efforts of single actor. In fact, US political
decisions are the “vector sum” of the effect of many different forces
acting together to produce a result that sometimes looks nonsensical but
which is still the logical consequence from the joint effect of all the
groups that determined it. In other words, all the explanations above
could be right, albeit to various degrees. This being said, I strongly
favor the last one as, like Putin, I have come to the conclusion that
the Empire is run by stupid, ignorant ideologues who live in a world
totally detached from reality.
What
is absolutely certain is that this latest move by the US is, again, a
dream come true for Putin and his supporters, especially right before
the elections.
First
and foremost, this is clearly an attack on “our guy” and even on “all
of us” and this triggers a very strong reaction of support from the
people. Furthermore, it separates all Russians into basically two camps:
first, Putin supporters and, second, those who are so totally sold out
to the US (like Ksenia Sobchak) that they would even hand back Crimea
just in order to be friends with the West. The first group must roughly
include, oh, let’s say 95%-98% of the population, the 2nd one about
2%-5%.
Second,
it is now clear that every Russian oligarch (along with his family
members and colleagues) has a big bullseye painted on his back and that
he now should hurry to place his assets in the only location where the
Empire cannot seize them: inside Russia.
Third,
a lot of those oligarchs and civil servant who more or less actively
opposed Putin and his policies now need to go back to him and, with hat
in hand and a groveling tone, need to make amends and beg for his pardon
and mercy. They placed their bets on the AngloZionists and they lost.
Now they need to come back to papa and beg for clemency (they will
probably get it too). This right before the elections is very helpful
indeed even if nobody doubts the outcome of these election to begin
with.
To
sum it all up: the latest move is a true blessing for Putin and Russia
in both economic and political terms and the only ones really hurt by
all this are the Atlantic Integrationists (who are really going through
some very bad times anyway).
The paradox: US sanctions – a blessing in disguise?
Let’s
think about what the US has been doing over the past couple of years.
Officially, the US has been trying to “isolate” Russia. But isolate from
exactly what? From Peru? Or maybe from cultural exchanges with Morocco?
Hardly. When the US says that it wants to isolate Russia it means
cutting Russia off the western markets (trade), the western financial
system (credit) and the western political elites (fora). These sanctions
were supposed to hurt Russia precisely because Russia was, at least in
part, dependent on trade with the EU, credits from western financial
institution and her participation in G8 (now G7) type of events. Putin
predicted that it would take 2 years for Russia to recover from these
sanctions (and the concomitant drop in energy prices) and he was right:
Russia not only created new trade ties, but also finally began investing
in her internal market, she found credits elsewhere (China) and in
terms of fora, it really turned out that the G7 without Russia was more
or less like the Council of Europe or, for that matter, the UN Security
Council: useless. Instead, world leaders began booking flight and
visiting Moscow. Now the latest US sanctions are putting an immense
amount of pressure on Russian oligarchs to bring their money back home.
It sure looks to me that US sanctions made it possible for Putin to do
something he might never have been able to do without them: to seriously
begin reforming Russia (which badly needed such reforms). Remember,
Eurasian Sovereignists are just that – sovereignists; whereas Atlantic
Integrationists are just that – integrationists. By “cutting off Russia
from the West” – whose agenda did the US really hurt, the
integrationists or the sovereignists? Could it be that Putin owes his
immense popularity, and Russia her success, at least in part to US
sanctions?
The
fundamental theory of deterrence hold that “deterrence is in the eye of
the beholder”. In other words, I cannot assume that what would deter me
would also deter you. In order to deter you I need to understand what
your goals and values are. I submit that when the US elites decided to
sanction Russia (putatively to deter her from further resisting the
Empire) they made a fundamentally wrong assumption: that Russia was
ruled by Atlantic Integrationist types who would be horrified and
deterred. Instead, these sanctions ended being a blessing for the
Eurasian Sovereignists who used these sanctions to paralyze the Atlantic
Integrationists, to push through much needed reforms and basically
eliminate the pro-Western opposition. In so many ways Russia is still a
mess and a struggling country, but thanks to US sanctions none of that
will have any impact at all on the next Presidential elections in Russia
and the Eurasian Sovereignists are more powerful than ever before.
Thank you, Uncle Shmuel!
Possible Russian reactions:
Whatever
the reasons for all this nonsense, this does beg some kind of reaction
from Russia and I think that judging by all the similar situations in
the recent past, the Russian reaction is fairly easy to predict.
First,
there will be no grandiose gesture or loud hyperbolic statements out of
the Kremlin. Putin jokingly deplored that his own name was not on the
list, Peskov said that this was a hostile act, a few Russian Duma
members canceled planned trip to the US and Russian commentators
expressed various degrees of dismay and disgust. But, all in all, this
is very, very little. As usual, this will be completely misunderstood in
the West where the culture is roughly “if your enemy slaps you in your face, you have to immediately slap him back lest you look weak“. In most of Asia (and the Middle-East, by the way), the norm is totally different: “if
your enemy slaps you in the face you step back and plan how to bring
him down in the long run because what matters is not the short-lived
posturing, which can be even dangerous and counter-productive, but
playing the long run and winning“. You could say that in the West
the attention span and long-term planning is counted in days or weeks,
while in Asia and the Middle-East it is counted in years and decades. So
while there might not be anything particularly photogenic or
quote-worthy coming out of the Kremlin, a few Russians did drop hints of
what the Russian policy will be: “good luck to the Americans trying get anything major done on the planet without our support“.
And just to make that point clear to those who can connect the dots,
the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, speaking on the
Russian TV channel Rossiya One, declared that the Director of the
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, recently
traveled to the US and met with some high level US personalities
(including, according to US sources, CIA Director Mike Pompeo). As Newsweek wrote, Naryshkin would be “the Russian spy chief behind 2016 election hacking campaign”
which various nutcases even called an act of war. He is on the very top
of all these sanctions list, but there he is, traveling inside the US
and meeting with top US officials. Why did Antonov leak this? Simply to
show that for all the huffing and puffing and hyperbolic grandstanding
from the US, the reality is that the US and Russia are still very much
working together because they really cannot afford not doing so (as I
write these words I got a link to a WaPo article
now saying that Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security
Service (FSB) and even Colonel-General Korobov, the head of the Main
Directorate of the General Stuff (GU GSh), the military intelligence
service (ex-GRU) also took part in this trip to the US.)
So that is the real Russian message to the US: you
need us a heck of a lot more than we need you because you need to work
with us or else you won’t get anything done, we are still willing to
work with you, but if you go crazy then your global interests will
suffer much more than our ours; for all your hot air, you have been
working with us all along and if you go overboard with the nonsense we
will first reveal the extend of our collaboration and, if that is not
enough to cool you down, we will terminate it.
There
is no doubt in my mind that for most inhabitants of the AngloZionist
Empire the notion of the almighty US needing the struggling (and
economically comparatively small) Russia more than Russia needs the US
is laughable. These folks would say something like that: “what is
the Russian share of the gross world product, how many aircraft carriers
does Russia have and what is the Russian weight in international
financial institutions? And how is your vodka-soaked Ruble doing anyway,
buddy?!” The Russians wouldn’t reply much of anything, most would just smile in contempt and think something along the lines of “when is the last time you got anything successfully done, you dumb pompous ass“. That’s fundamentally fine since this message is really not destined to ideological drones but to those in power in the US who are aware of the real
scorecard of Uncle Sam and who realize that right now it is the Empire,
not Russia, which is almost completely paralyzed, and isolated (oh
irony!) on all levels.
Conclusion one: the Empire’s main export is hot air
Many
of my friends and readers send me various articles with all sorts of
quotes by US officials and I have a really hard time explaining to them
that they should stop listening to this endless bombastic verbiage.
Not only because the vast majority of officials making these statements
are both stupid and ignorant, but because the main export of the
AngloZionist Empire nowadays is hot air. We saw that recently with the
grand statements about Kurdistan or, for that matter, the plans “A”,
“B”, “C” and “D” about Syria: all delivered with the same final
gravitas. This is counter-intuitive, I will admit that. After all, when
the President of the nuclear superpower, a three star general or any
other senior official takes the floor to make an official statement, we
automatically tend to assume that what they say matters, especially if
they are surrounded by flags and many exited reporters. But it really
doesn’t. Especially not when the “other guy” (the Russians and the
Chinese) come from a culture which frowns upon loudmouthed histrionics:
“make my day, punk” is just not an (Eur-)Asian way of delivering
threats.
I don’t mean to suggest that we should ignore the Empire, most definitely not, but we should look at what the Empire actually does
and more or less ignore it’s constantly running narcissistic
commentary. When the Empire promises to do something right, it usually
lies. When it promises to do something wrong, these are usually empty
threats. So what’s the point of paying so much attention to these
promises?
Conclusion two: learning optimism and caution from history
If
we look at world history we can always see the same phenomenon taking
place: when things go well, the elites are united, but as soon as things
go south, the elites turn on each other. The reason for this is quite
simple: elites are never as united as they pretend to be. In reality
Empires, and any big country, really, are run by a coalition of elites
who all benefit from the established order. They can hate each other,
sometimes even kill each other (SA vs SS, Trotskyists vs Stalinists,
etc.), but they will work together just like crime families do in the
mob. But when a real, profound, crisis becomes undeniably apparent,
these ruling elites typically turn on each other and when that happens,
nobody is really in charge until, eventually, the entire system comes
tumbling down or a new main ruler/group emerges. Right now the
AngloZionists elites are locked into a huge struggle which is likely to
last for the foreseeable future. However, we need to be aware that such a
situation can also be used be a previously less visible party to make a
move and seize power. That is exactly how Putin came to power, pushed
by the Russian security services even while Eltsin was still the nominal
head of state. This also fully applies to the Ukraine which is also run
by a group of people whose main current contribution to the world scene
is hot air. But that could change very, very fast. This is why while I
recommend more or less ignoring the hot air coming out of the top US (or
Ukie) officials, I would keep an attentive eye on the level right below
them, especially the US (or Ukie) military. Finally, we should never
confuse the inability to get anything done with the inability to make
things worse: the latter does not flow from the former. Nazi Germany was
basically defeated in Stalingrad (Feb 1943) but that did not prevent it
from murdering millions more people for another two and a half years
before two Soviet soldiers placed the Soviet flag on top of the
Reichstag. We are still far away from such a “Reichstag flag” moment,
but we sure are witnessing the AngloZionist “Stalingrad” taking place
before our eyes.
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